


By Any Other Name

by notoneforreality



Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [3]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: 007 Fest, 007 Fest 2020, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen, Immortal Merlin (Merlin), James is confused, Magic, Prompt Fill, Q's Name, Team Q Branch, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24861790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality
Summary: Bond has questions about Q's name, and then he has more questions about the frequency with which Q receives and recovers from injuries.Q doesn't answer any of them, until he does.
Relationships: James Bond & Q
Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795726
Comments: 15
Kudos: 99





	By Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> Written for--  
> Trope prompt table: The mystery of Q's name;  
> This prompt from the 2020 anon list: Q is a person unable to get killed (he at least seems to age but it is unclear if it stops some time and he’ll be immortal or if age will one day kill him). Working at Q branch was supposed to be a not too boring desk job but for some reason finds himself an often victim of attempted mugging, murders and kidnappings. Not an easy feat to hide that fatal wounds do nothing for him, but he does it until a noisy 007 smells that something is off about him.

It starts with a mission to Bulgaria. James gets bored in the airport and finds a rotating display of garish plastic mugs with names on them, and immediately decides that Q needs one. For that, however, he needs to know Q’s name. There’s no time to find it out before his flight gets called, but he decides that he can work it out over the course of the week and buy it on the way back through Duty Free.

James spends half the mission bothering Q about his name over the earpiece connection, and the other half in person. The second half is more sullen than the first, because Q’s already in a bad mood about being stuck on a train for three days in order to haul James out of a high-security vault in Sofia. 

That’s when the other thing starts. They’re fighting their way out of the enemy compound, Q frantically working away at every camera, lock, and automated door they come across while James puts bullets and fists in anyone who tries to stop them. He takes one man’s legs out, plants his foot in another’s head, and is lunging towards a gunman when the firearm goes off.

James thinks they’ve been lucky; he’s not been hit, and he knocks the gunman unconscious before he has a chance to fire again. When he turns around, however, Q is slumped against the door. His face is screwed up in pain, and he’s got one hand wrapped around his side while he keeps doggedly at the passcode he’s working on, and there’s blood seeping through and staining his jumper.

“Shit, Q!”

Q waves him off. He won’t let James near him for the rest of the escape, and it’s only when they break into someone’s shed for a reprieve that James can get a good look at the bullet wound. 

It’s worse than he though. There’s an unbelievable amount of blood, and James isn’t quite sure how Q is still moving, nor why he’s so insistent that James don’t look too closely.

“It’ll be fine,” Q says.

“Listen, Quentin, you need to get that looked at.”

Q rolls his eyes so hard that James’ own eyes hurt in sympathy. “I’ll be fine. And that’s not my name.”

* * *

Q is fine. James is suspicious, but maybe he’d been wrong about where the bullet had gone; he certainly hadn’t had a good look at it. The amount of blood could have obscured a shallow wound, one that takes Q less than a week to completely recover from. 

A week later, James goes down to Q-Branch and finds the place in more chaos than usual. Q is sat at R’s desk, his outfit dishevelled, a blooming bruise forming around one eye, and a bandage wrapped around most of his forearm, already stained dark red.

“What happened?” James barks, and half the Q-Branch minions startle. One squeaks.

“Q was mugged,” R says over Q’s attempt to tell James that it was nothing.

Q goes sullen. “It was an attempted mugging. They didn’t get anything.”

“Which is a good thing. I told you not to bring the drive home with you.” R cuffs Q round the back of the head and then winces, apparently having forgotten Q’s injuries. “Sorry.”

James assesses Q. It’s the bandage that most worries him. He can see some of the wound poking out of the top, and following the blood down the crepe suggests that it was a long slash, from Q’s elbow to his wrist. It’s the sort of wound from which people bleed to death, but Q just looks slightly paler than usual, and just as grumpy.

“Well, Quinlan, you should be more careful on your morning commute.”

R frowns in confusion; Q frowns in disapproval.

“I’ll be fine. And that’s not my name.”

* * *

Two days later, on his morning commute, Q is kidnapped. Something about a code from thirty years ago that some right-wing French hacker group think he wrote, despite the fact that he would have been about three years old, according to his file. He refuses to help them, because of course he does, and James only gets there after Q’s head has been smashed against the brick wall.

James takes out all but one of the group and leaves the last man conscious to cower in a corner while he runs to Q.

Q blinks up at him, eyes blown wide, and James carefully moves to look at the head wound. It’s bad, the sort of bad that means brain damage, if not death, and James’ breath catches. He’s grown to care for this grumpy, mysterious Quartermaster with no name and wondrous recuperation abilities.

“I thought I told you to be more careful, Quirinius.”

Q finds enough energy to shove at James, scowling. “I’ll be fine. And that’s not my name.”

* * *

It becomes a habit. Q is kidnapped, mugged, attacked, and James goes to collect him with a new name every time. He goes through eight different names beginning with Q before Q sighs, long suffering, and fixes him with a flat look.

“You do realise that the Q stands for Quartermaster, don’t you? As in, it has no relevance to my actual name.”

James takes it as tacit invitation to keep trying new names as long as they don’t start with Q.

He comes up with a list and tries them out in the field and over the comms, earning sighs and unimpressed hums. Whenever Q is hurt however, James always gets the same response: “I’ll be fine. And that’s not my name.”

The number of injuries Q has protested the severity of grows too high for James to count. Harry, Phillip, Oscar, Nathan, Daniel are all tried by a concerned James and rejected by a hurt Q, along with all the ‘A’ and ‘B’ names James had found on a website and used in the less frantic moments. That had been fun explaining to Eve that James definitely hadn’t knocked someone up, that he was looking at this baby name website for a reason that didn’t involve naming babies in the slightest.

Once, a few days after Q has been hit by a bus just before meeting James at the rendezvous point (“Bloody hell, Laurence, watch when you’re crossing the road.” “I’ll be fine. And that’s not my name.”), James goes down to medical.

“No,” the Doctor says. She shrugs. “The Quartermaster hasn’t been down here since he was promoted.”

James watched a collision that should have killed or nearly killed Q. It needed medical attention. But, apparently, Q hasn’t received any.

* * *

The next time it happens is almost comical. Q has brought Bond down to Cornwall to test out new submarine technology — the journey providing ample time to try more ‘F’ names, after ‘C’, ‘D’, and ‘E’ have all been exhausted — and they’re walking along the clifftop to wherever Q-Branch has stashed their technology. Q is explaining how they developed this new water vehicle from a similar model used by the Navy, when a child comes streaking along on his bike and crashes into Q.

The child falls to the ground. Q falls over the cliff.

James shouts and the child cries and the child’s guardian screams and shrieks and James tells them both to stay there and call for an ambulance. He scrambles down the jagged cliff face as fast as he dares without ending up sprawled on the rocks below with Q, and keeps his eyes trained in front of him, watching for every available handhold.

When he gets to the bottom, Q is sat up.

“How are you still alive?” The words fall out of his mouth before he can stop them. The cliff towers over them, and the rocks on which he stands, on which Q sits, onto which Q fell, are solid and sharp.

Q scowls at him and doesn’t answer.

“Alright, Rob,” James says, instead of pressing the issue, because he’s shaken, even if Q somehow isn’t. “The kid and parent are calling and ambulance. They’ll check you over for any internal damage.”

“I’ll be fine,” Q says. “And that’s not my name.”

* * *

James gets both answers at the same time. It’s more like the Sofia situation, in that both of them are in the field, Q posing as a tech entrepreneur for the computer convention they’re at, with James taking the role of his business partner.

Things go wrong. They usually do when James is involved, but he’s usually better at fixing them. This time, they end up in a cell, and Q ends up staring down the barrel of a gun. James is cuffed to a wall, too far away and too well restrained to get to Q in time to save him. Instead he has to watch.

The gun fires twice: one headshot, one in the heart.

James yells.

Q crumples to the ground, and the woman behind the gun laughs. 

“Enjoy your stay, Mr Bond.”

“Fuck you,” James snarls, wrenching against the chains.

She laughs again and leaves, slamming the metal door behind her.

“Fuck,” say James, sagging as far as his restraints will allow. His cheeks are wet, his vision blurred.

“Fuck,” says Q.

James blanks out.

When he comes back to, Q is wincing at him.

“How the fuck are you alive?” James demands.

Q looks sheepish. “I’ll be fine. And my name...it’s Merlin.”


End file.
